Black Through Black Eyes

Starting back in 2010, for couple of years I had this series of “point of view” blogs with my friend, Gerald Montgomery, we called AtlanticDivide. We would take a topic and approach it from our two different perspectives. He, an African-American, and me, an African immigrant. We went through many topics: Affirmative Action, reparations, going back home, the N word, etc. But this one here, about how we view each other, was one of the more popular dialogues.

A bit on our approach: For some topics such as this one, at first we would impersonate the general sentiment in our respective groups. As you could imagine, this would be filled with some pretty narrowmindedness and stereotypes. But then immediately after posting, we would respond in comments with our own personal thoughts and feelings. So please make sure to read the comments as well.

The African

It is no surprise the rift between Africans-in-America and African-Americans. Our kids navigate it at schools, their parents do at their workplaces; and we all do everywhere we come face-to-face with each other. The worst of us–which may be a lot of us–think African-Americans are lazy; those people are ghetto, they are wild, irresponsible, unreliable, conniving, always complaining about racism…when everything has been (and continues to be) handed to them…and have the audacity to think they are better than us.

To forgive and forget— Africans invented that. Many Africans don’t even remember the Europeans and colonization let alone hold them accountable for the woes of the continent and her people. So slavery and a history of discrimination an African-American may give as the reason for their current situation simply doesn’t hold water with us. We don’t know enough about psychology to know about PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) or sociology to know about the correlation between the auction block and the ghetto, plantation and the prison system. To us it doesn’t matter what your grandfather couldn’t do, it’s what you can (but won’t) do.

The belief that America is the land of opportunities is a religion to many Africans. How else would you feel, if you escaped poverty and destitution to a land of milk and honey, where an easy job could pay you $8 an hour (when you hardly made a dollar a week where you came from)? To be without a job in America is an abomination to the African-in-America. So when we look at African-Americans unemployed en masse, we don’t see racial demons at play. We can’t; we have not been bred to see these things. We don’t know racism…except maybe if we are from South Africa. What we know is this: if you want and work hard for it, nothing should stop you from getting it. If they try, they will fail. You may need to work harder, harder than others; but if that’s what it takes, that’s what you give. That’s what we give. Why can’t they?

It is said that teevee adds few pounds to a body. It may just be it also adds few pounds to reality. But only the best of us notice this and take it for what it’s worth. For the rest of us, teevee is gospel. To many Africans-in-America, cable news is a new phenomenon. We, therefore, don’t know the concept of sensationalization that is so prevalent in this medium. Yet we are fascinated with it. And what does it show us? Loud African-Americans on shows like Maury, violent African-Americans on the evening news, on those prison shows, special reports, etc. To further shape our view, because of our economic status more often when we come to America, we live in low-income neighborhoods, where our first introduction to African-Americans come in the body of niggas. Unfortunately, we don’t know the difference between Blacks and niggas. We end up painting them both the same: with a nigga brush. Consequently, we see the group as uneducated (because niggas usually are), drug infested (because niggas usually are), violent (because niggas usually are), disrespectful (that may just be an American disposition).

But perhaps the most seethed resentment many Africans-in-America have toward African-Americans is a personal one. Forget not being welcomed with open arms, each African-in-America has at least a story of an early encounter with one or more African-Americans that left him/her feeling less than brotherly-loved. If you come here young enough to attend elementary and/or high school, to your surprise while many White kids are at least cordial with you, it’s the African-Americans that make fun of you, your people and where you come from; they are the most ignorant of all that you are (and thought they too were). Personally, it was my African-American classmates in high school that called me Kunta Kinte, laughed at my Payless shoes and asked me if I lived on trees where I came from. When you stand on the other side of a counter from them, they are rude, quick to be impatient with you for not speaking English or for doing so with an accent; in a relationship they are confrontational; in separation they are vindictive; as strangers, they are abrasive and unrefined.

A friend once told me he hated (yes, hated) African-Americans because when he first came to America–in Southside Chicago–after cashing his first paycheck at one of those check-cashing places, he put his first American dollars in his pocket and proudly walked to the nearest bus station. However, before the bus came, he was approached by an African-African who punched him in the face, robbed him of his money and left him bleeding on the snowy ground. He has never forgiven the group for that. Obviously, it makes little sense to “hate” a whole group because of one encounter with one individual, but human beings, we are prone to stereotypes and often base lifelong sentiments on a single encounter. It doesn’t make it right. But human beings are seldom perfect.

The African-American

The gripes against the African, at least those that are stated openly, are mostly socioeconomic in nature. The consensus is this: His governments are corrupt; his people, accursed and starving! So he trades in his loincloth for a “coat-suit”, leaves his mud hut (and his flies) and hops a crop-duster to the only international airport in all of Africa. Once in America, the African struts around with the pride of a pompous peacock – arrogant and condescending – enjoying the freedoms earlier generations of so-called Negroes were fire-hosed, jailed, even lynched for, without any consideration or gesture of gratitude. Freedoms the descendants of those civil rights protesters are still fighting for today! Like a Johnny-come-lately getting in the American Dream handout line ahead of the indigenous African-American.

The African comes here to educate himself in universities and make gain in corporate America only to pack up and go “back home”, taking his American wealth with him. He speaks so fondly of his home yet comes here like the locust; with his kinfolk in swarms to pillage for a season, leaving the land destitute. While here, he enjoys the benefits afforded to black people but doesn’t contribute to the African-American struggle; because he believes it is not his fight. In other words, he’s black like us when it benefits him and African when disassociation pays the greater dividends.

And lastly, he looks down his nose at the African-American because this so-called Negro has no tongue, tradition, or territory; no back home to go to. He thinks he’s better; favored above the black man he has met here. He speaks his dialog to exclude the “Akata” (a derogatory term for African-Americans) from the conversation. He eats his cultural food and wears his colorful traditional gowns as if spreading those peacock feathers in boast.

But he is still BLACK; a butterfly, stereotypically darker than his American cross-bred moth cousin. A black butterfly that emerged from his chrysalis only to mock the so-called African-American moth for developing a cocoon; like the pot calling the kettle black! He can’t possibly know a thousand African-Americans personally but argues tens of millions are criminal and lazy. (In fact, the day he stops saying that most are no good, that this is the rule, will be the day he can legitimately place sole blame on the individual for, then, being the exception. The rule being most of us were good, the bad individual would be the exception, thus liable for his condition. But for now, the African says most are no good, yet blames the individual.) He calls the American Negro Akata while the white man calls him nigger, too!

Black Through Black Eyes was last modified: February 10th, 2018 by IBé

2 comments

First I must say, this is the hardest piece I have ever written. Because it required me to write with passion something I don’t feel at all. The truth is it doesn’t take much wisdom to rebut all the views I put forward. America is a great place to call home. But that is far from a period at the end of that sentence. The truth is America is healing from a disease unlike any the world has ever seen. You don’t hold a nation in bondage, denied all the basic requirements of a proper human being, generation after generation, and expect that nation to walk upright as soon as you lift your feet from their back. Slavery (at least attempted) to rob the African-American of her humanity. To belittle the effects of this is to believe trees don’t need seed or water to grow. Yes, some African-Americans have manage to thrive in this environment; but that is not evidence to show lack of self-actualization on the part of the rest, but rather prove of the formidability of those few that manage to shine no matter the cave. The institution of slavery and the hundred years afterward of Jim Crow is as important in explaining the seat of African-Americans today as it were during the Philadelphia Compromise of 1787 that legally reduced a black man to 3/5 of a man. You don’t build an institution on rape and separation of families and expect those same people to respect the sanctity of marriage and family few short years afterwards. If they do, they are superfuckingmen!

African-Americans are “loud” because Africans are “loud”. Unlike most Europeans, we are warm weather people, as that outside people. And when you are outside, competing with the elements, you have to be, well a little loud. If you don’t believe me, visit any market on the continent. On our verandas, from opposite sides of a street we carry long conversations. Yet we look down on African-American kids for talking loudly on public busses. It’s because when we come here, as visitors, we tune down our Africaness. But African-Americans are not visitors to America! This is their home. So it only makes sense that they behave here as we behave in Africa. And trust me, we don’t back down in Nairobi, we don’t back down in Cairo, we are not always respectful in Luanda or Brazzaville; and many Africans sweeping malls in Minnesota will not touch a broom in Dakar; I know enough Ghanaians with absentee fathers, Guinean husbands that beat their wives, and Nigerians that will cheat you out of your draws.

African-Americans are far from lazy. If they were, America (yes, this place we think heaven) would not be what it is. They built this place with their bare hands. Capitalism is a flag planted on their backs. If they act like they deserve better, well that’s because they do. America doesn’t owe the African-in-America anything but “you’re welcome” to our “thank you”. On the other hand, she owes African-Americans her very existence. I’d be the first to tell them sitting idle waiting for that 40 acres and a mule is futile. But if they do, I will not hold it against them. God knows they have toiled hard enough for it.

I’m not even going to try to counter the stereotypes of the group based on an encounter with a single member. The few words I have are dear to me, so I’ll save them.

But this I will say: human beings are violent. Africans know this more than any other groups. At least we should. We don’t have the right to call anybody violent. American prisons are full of Nigerians and other Africans too. But more importantly, Dar Salem prisons are full of Tanzanians; Guinea Bissau is drug infested, completely taken over by Columbian drugs; Johannesburg is notorious for arm robberies.

Africans haven’t done much since independence. And we didn’t have the baggage African-Americans had to drag to freedom. Yet they have managed wonders in America. I think they deserve our praise and admiration. As an African enjoying the freedom and respect not afforded my counterparts in Europe and elsewhere in the world, I’m thankful to African-Americans and the wars they fought to make it easier for me to raise my children in this country.

What (I perceive) the African-American fails to realize is that the African is only working the system available to him; as well the African-American should. We cannot blame him for filling slots we are either unable or unwilling to fill; jobs we have little to no respect for. We cannot fault him for doing his research or asking the right questions to find out what he qualifies for. And if you asked him, he would tell you all about Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Pete O’Neal, the fugitive Black Panther Party member the Tanzanians took in as one of their own some 40 plus years ago! They call him “Mzee”, which means “elder”.

An African [citizen] departs the plane, now an immigrant, having none of the privileges exclusive to citizenship, but carries with him the hopes and dreams of two or more families. In some cases an entire community. Back home he may have been a local doctor with years of experience, but his credentials are not recognized here. So, here, he must accept work as an Orderly while taking night classes to be a Nurse. He studies his lessons and works very hard because he knows many people are counting on him. He “pulls a double shift” or labors a second job to support him and send money back home; he is the sole source of income for many of his relatives.

In some cases he only left his homeland because of civil war, political persecution, or famine. So, yes, he has every intention of moving back to retire in the mansion he sends money home to have built from the ground up. In many cases he never wanted to leave in the first place. He is a peacock, in his multi-color gowns (not European grays) because he is the pride of his family; the now famous son or uncle in America. Not because he is better than you or I. He wasn’t “black” until he came here – “colored” until he came here. So, by virtue of this, he doesn’t know his place [in white America]. He’s never seen himself as anything less than a man. When the Italians prosper as a group, by any means, not a peep comes from the other white communities – or ours. But when he, say a Liberian who thinks first of Liberians, does for his own he’s accused of taking from the African-American community.

As for speaking his dialog in the presence of African-Americans, this is the one strike against him for which the African has no good excuse. Even they, when confronted with it, will admit this is rude behavior; especially in their place of business in front of their African-American customers. But perhaps this could be an ice breaker of sorts. Perhaps they can offer to teach us a word or two, or maybe we could ask. Likewise with the food; bonding through the sharing of a meal is a common practice among all black people.

With the Schism now defined, I believe the major issue we have with the African is the self hate we have of ourselves. Self hate cultivated through negative media coverage of the place we come from. Bombarding us with images of poverty, war, famine, and AIDS. “Feed My Starving Children” efforts seems to be exclusively an African charity. And the quickest way into Heaven still seems to be adopting an African orphan. Why, the mere fact that we only hear it called Africa, and not Ethiopia, Liberia, Ghana, etc, is evidence of the conspiracy to keep black nations insignificant, thus inferior, in the minds of African-Americans.

If in 2010 we still think Africans are very dark-skinned people who wear loin clothes and live in fly-infested huts, and this is the place we came from, what does that say about how we see ourselves? The pride exuded by white Americans when they tell you they are Irish or Italian or German, we do not have regarding Africa; because we do not know which country we came from. We don’t have a grandmother who tells bedtime stories in Amharic or an uncle who argues in Swahili. We don’t have second-cousins in Cameroon to visit bi-annually. But is this the African’s fault?

The African perceives the American African as lethargic, uneducated, gun-toting thugs, who spend more time complaining than maintaining. The American African knows only that the African lives in trees or mud huts, wear loin clothes and are in desperate need of charity. The source of our perspectives; propaganda spread by American media and missionaries. Propaganda reinforced by real-life examples and near experiences validated by propaganda.

I believe the African need only meet a few well-mannered black Americans to give him cause to challenge what he has been told. He would still be somewhat embarrassed by the “ghetto” African-American, but would realize there is hope for reversing the American Negro’s condition – even more so when the African acknowledges the systemic element. But for the American African, the perception of Africans as sub-human beings, especially when you believe yourself to be inferior, is not so easily dissolved. So the African [in American], by my estimation, is more prepared to change. The American African will need direct mentoring, in most cases, to prepare him for change!